Very Exclusive Gadgets & Gizmos

This GPS 800G Watch Phone combines, yep you’ve guessed it, a cell phone, GPS tracker and timepiece in a delightfully chunky wrist mounted machine. Well that’s what the marketing dude told us to say anyway. It also comes with an SOS button and a speeding alert, so you can track how fast your teenage hooligan kids are driving in the family sedan.

What caught our eye regarding this new Garmin Forerunner 110 GPS watch, was not the trendy red strap stripe – alluring though it is – nor the slightly slimmer form factor than previous incarnations. It’s not even the new heart, calorie workout monitoring stuff.

Some of us love being behind the wheel, never mind if the car is a bone shaker or if it has the whiff of a new vehicle inside – we just love the freedom that it provides us, being able to go anywhere we want to (as long as there are roads) although the only thing that might throw us off our kilter would be a non-stop nagging wife, a backseat driver or the bane of all driving – nasty traffic jams while you have been holding your bladder for the past hour and really, really need to go.

Geocachers are a funny mob, trying to surreptitiously ferret out hidden things that have been buried in often very conspicuous places. Magellan can help you out with their new Magellan eXplorist GC handheld GPS unit. It has a colour screen, compass overlay and uses the SiRFstarIII GPS chipset. It runs on a pair of AA batteries which will keep you searching continuously for 18 hours.

You don’t see too many removable GPS units that can boast a 7″ screen, but here’s one for under $150 and it has 800×480 resolution screen (at an impressive 133dpi) to boot. This 7 inch Touch Screen GPS (CVMF-CS34) is part GPS and part media centre. It will pair with your phone via Bluetooth and do the usual answer and hang up calls, but it also has an FM transmitter for caller playback over the stereo. It also has a built-in microphone.

These Zeal Transcend ski googles have got all sorts of high-faluting, high-tech doo-dads in them. First there’s GPS so you know where you are and how far it is to the ski bar. There’s also a temperature gauge, speedometer, clock and a stopwatch. The best bit is it’s all displayed inside the anti-fog coated goggles. There’s a whole world of information coming with later versions including maps, text, caller ID, video camera etc. Currently there are two versions, a low-light photochromatic version for US$450 and a polarized version for US$350. Both available for pre-order.

The Bushnell Backtrack is GPS in its simplest form. Switch it on and hit a button to store your current location and turn it off. After you get where you’re going, hit the button to recall your starting point, the distance to it and then just follow the arrow home. It only has two buttons and it can be used to store 3 locations (home, car and favourite) so it’s so easy to use. It has a built-in electronic compass that works while you stand still, it uses the brilliant SiRF Star III GPS chip, is weather-resistant, comes in 4 colours and needs 2 AAA batteries.

Garmin, an old name when it comes to navigational devices, are back in the market with a couple of new devices – the Garmin Oregon 450t and 450 touchscreen. Both models will target the outdoor enthusiast, as they boast compatibility with the entire online community at Garmin Connect while supporting Garmin’s free Custom Maps utility that is useful for transferring paper or digital maps onto your compatible handheld. Sounds pretty neat, eh? With both models supporting touchscreen technology, you are able to navigate through a glove-friendly touchscreen interface.

The BUGbase is a tiny Linux computer which comes with 4 slots for add-ons. The base unit features Bluetooth, a chunky rechargeable battery, USB, Ethernet, microSD slot and a tripod mount, and you can add modules to beef it up with things like GPS, WiFi, colour touchscreen, audio and motion sensing.

The Car Cam Dually is a dash mounted unit which features not just one digital video camera, but two. One facing the oncoming juggernaut, the other recording your look of terror as you take desperate evasive action. Only 1.3 megapixel resolution so the grimace will be a bit grainy, but hey, it comes with a free G-Shock sensor, integrated GPS compass and SD slot for additional memory storage, so stop with the whining. $385.00.